


Between the Pages

by servantofclio



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-23
Updated: 2017-07-23
Packaged: 2018-12-06 02:44:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11591286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/servantofclio/pseuds/servantofclio
Summary: How Varric came to write "The Tale of the Champion," what Hawke thought about it, and what happened after.





	Between the Pages

**Author's Note:**

  * For [superfluouskeys](https://archiveofourown.org/users/superfluouskeys/gifts).



> Hi superfluouskeys! This fic started with your second prompt (what happens in the days / weeks / months after the end of DA2)... but then it took on a life of its own. I hope you enjoy it!

_Hawke,_

_Greetings from Kirkwall. I don_ _’t know if this will reach you, but I wanted to tell you how things are going._

_Things are_

Varric stopped, pen poised above the paper. Sure, he lied a lot, but even so, he balked at writing _fine_ in the blank spot on the page. Hawke wouldn’t believe it, anyway.

He scratched out the line, wrote: _Well, you know Kirkwallers. Kirkwall people are tough, they can weather anything._

He grimaced. Forced cheer, so much better. It was true to a point. The qunari attack, three years back, was a case in point. Then, people had mostly banded together to fight back, or gone to ground in their homes, barricading the walls and doors. Sure, there’d been some opportunistic raids. A possible qunari invasion struck some enterprising assholes as a good time to settle scores, and there’d been quite a bit of looting, but things had settled down quickly enough.

With the Chantry gone, though — people didn’t know how to handle that. Every day you could still find people crying and singing the Chant outside the mound of rubble where the Chantry had been. Other people were still crawling through the debris searching. For lost loved ones or loot, you couldn’t always be sure which. Varric had personally seen a supposedly bereaved mother carting off a chunk of giant golden Andraste one day.

It had been long enough since the explosion that you couldn’t really expect to find anyone alive in there, anyway.

And then there were the people looking for someone to blame.

Varric shook his head. That definitely wasn’t the part he wanted to tell Hawke. No matter how many times he told himself it wasn’t his fault, or hers, guilt felt like a winter coat on a summer day, heavy and stifling. Maybe they hadn’t taken Anders seriously enough. Maybe they should have done something sooner.

It wasn’t as if they hadn’t tried, though. Reason, warnings, arguments, sarcasm, sympathy: between them the gang had tried just about everything.

He shook his head again and dipped the pen in the ink.

_Aveline_ _’s not letting anything get too disorderly, of course. Perish the thought. The gangs are mostly keeping things calm and organized in Lowtown. The guard and the gangs cooperating on something, who would have ever guessed?_

_And Daisy_ _’s all right, she’s been working with the Alienage elves, keeping everyone safe and fed and all that good stuff._

Varric stopped again, wincing at the memory of the night that some people decided that this whole mess must be the elves’ fault, somehow, and had marched toward the Alienage with torches, only to find walls of thorny vines bursting out of Kirkwall’s stony streets, twining around the Alienage walls, forming a living, bristling barricade. It had still taken two guard troops to quiet and disperse the crowd, a lot of them screaming about mages, but Merrill’s work had protected a lot of elves that night.

_Templars are just about as unwelcome as mages in the city right now, though. They_ _’ve mostly been keeping to themselves over in the Gallows._

Varric had gone over to the Gallows with Aveline himself to talk with Cullen. The man looked to have aged twenty years. He’d offered all the manpower he had available. But having armed templars in the streets had proved more trouble than they were worth, in Aveline’s judgment. Some people were afraid of them, others begged them for rescue (from what wasn’t clear), others threw rocks at them, shouting that they’d failed or betrayed the Chantry.

It was all a mess. Way more of a mess than Hawke needed to hear about. More than Varric had the heart to tell, anyway. Hawke didn’t need to hear that the dust from the Chantry rubble still coated most of Hightown, or that Lowtown was full of sick kids with coughs. She didn’t need to know about the nobles writing letters, practically begging shitty younger sons of noble families throughout the Marches to come take over as Viscount. 

She _definitely_ didn’t need to know how rioters had toppled her statue from its plinth, people shouting that the Champion had abandoned them, or that the whole debacle was the Champion’s fault somehow.

Varric had nearly gotten into a fight right here at the Hanged Man with a couple of drunken belligerents saying exactly the same thing. 

It was a sorry, shitty mess. What it wasn’t was Hawke’s fault. She’d tried, more than anyone, to keep things from getting to this point. That people were acting like it was all on her just pissed Varric off.

Oh, plenty of people were pointing fingers in other directions, too. Lots of people knew Anders had planted the bomb, although some folks, mostly people he’d healed over the years, refused to believe it. Lots of people blamed mages in general, which was exactly what they’d told Anders would happen, if any shit went down. Some people blamed the templars as well, or Meredith, for her harshness. Elves, gangs, nobles all came in for a certain amount of blaming, too.

But for a lot of people, somehow the Champion was responsible. For not Championing hard enough, or something.

Varric’s eyes drifted from the half-written letter in front of him to the pile of notes he’d scribbled over the last years. He’d learned pretty quick that Hawke’s exploits made good tavern tales. He’s started writing down the most interesting bits even before they went into the Deep Roads. Breaking into the cellars of the family mansion to find a lost will? Stuff like that was pure gold. He’d worked a few of them into his serials, with names changed and details heavily embroidered. But most of the odds and ends of tales he’d collected about Hawke and her companions lay buried in his notebooks.

Lately he’d been flipping through those notes, thinking idly about giving them a proper shape. Nostalgia, maybe, for what already seemed like the good old days. Or maybe nothing more than the itch to tell a good story, something with a proper beginning, middle, and end, while the rest of the world was falling apart.

With a sigh, Varric turned his attention back to his letter. It wasn’t much of a letter. He almost balled it up and tossed it into the fire right there. Instead, he put a sheet of blotting paper over it and dropped the most boring ledger he could find on top of it.

#

Anders’ revolution was, as Varric would have said, shit.

Actually, Varric would doubtless have found a cleverer way to put it. Varric had a knack for finding just the right turn of phrase to sum something up. Hawke, on the other hand, ended up with daft jokes when she tried.

She ducked her head as she passed the local Chantry, where the templar guards had doubled in number, just like in every other city, town, or village she’d passed through in the last few weeks. As if people were going to go blowing up Chantries willy-nilly. As if anyone _enjoyed_ digging dragon shit out of sewers to build bombs with.

The templars were more numerous and more touchy these days, though, so Hawke averted her eyes and tugged her hood a little lower, just in case any of them might have happened through Kirkwall in the last decade and been in a position to recognize her. She slumped her shoulders a bit and tried to look like an ordinary traveler who wasn’t looking for trouble.

Which was more difficult than she’d expected. Hawke was accustomed to looking for trouble, or at least she was accustomed to finding it. And she was used to being recognized. Everyone in Kirkwall knew her; even people who hadn’t met her face to face knew who she was, and had heard a few tales from someone or other. Over the years she’d gotten used to going about with a certain swagger, in fine clothes or heavy armor, not caring if recognized her. Respect or dread or avarice, whatever their reaction, she’d grown to know the flash of recognition across someone’s face when they realized who she was.

Now it was like going back to those first few years in Kirkwall, when she and Bethany had been grubbily scrapping for every advantage they could lay their hands on.

Or no, because then she hadn’t cared much if people noticed her — so long as they didn’t notice Bethany and her staff right behind her, which was precisely why Hawke made a point of looming to draw attention to herself.

This, this current business of keeping her head down and avoiding notice, that was more like her youth, Lothering and all the villages that had come before. Dress plainly, stay quiet, don’t look people in the eye, let your mother and father do the talking, take care of your brother and sister.

Mother and Father weren’t here any more. Carver and Bethany weren’t here to be taken care of, either — though Bethany could take care of herself, thanks to the Wardens. In any case, Hawke had gotten rather at keeping her mouth shut, in recent years. That was a pity. Nondescript dress, she could manage. She’d left the showy Champion armor behind, in any case, and now went about in plain steel and wool and leather. It was like becoming a new person. Admittedly, a boringly nondescript person.

Necessary, though, given her current notoriety. The Chantry, or the templars, or both, were looking for her. For what reason, Hawke didn’t know for certain, although she could imagine a good many, and didn’t care to find out which guess was correct. The reward notices posted here and there didn’t have a good likeness of her, so that was a small mercy. When Hawke had found out about it, she’d left Isabela and Fenris a note and scooted off into the night at the next port, feeling oddly guilty and disreputable. She was only doing it for their own safety; none of the rest of them needed to be dragged into the whole mess any more than they already were.

“And what have we here? An apostate?”

Hawke jerked, her hand instinctively creeping toward her sword before she caught herself. The words weren’t directed at _her_ , not that anyone was likely to mistake her for a mage, with her weapons and armor.

No, looking quickly around the street, she saw that the speaker was a templar, tall and broad-shouldered, like most of them, and his target was a young woman in a green dress shrinking out of his way. “I’m no mage, ser,” she said, backing away until she bumped into the nearest wall.

Most of the locals were studiously avoiding the scene, though a couple of people a few buildings down were looking that way as they talked to each other. Very sensible of them, really. No point in picking a fight with templars, especially since a second one was drifting over from the Chantry steps to see what his comrade was about.

“Is that so? You’re not one of those runaways from Ostwick then?”

Hawke grimaced. Word was that the Ostwick Circle had gone into full-on rebellion, with half the mages attacking the templars and the others fleeing into the countryside. Lots of mage and templar blood shed, some templars trying to annul their Circles while other templars cast their fancy shields aside, some mages setting their Circles on fire while others ran back to their families or simply away, leaving country and town folk alike nervous of newcomers.

The templar loomed over the girl, whose eyes darted about frantically. She was younger than Hawke had first realized, with a delicate face that reminded her of Bethany.

The girl, with no more room to back away, gasped and dashed toward the nearest alley. The templar grabbed, missed, and gave chase, his fellow templar breaking into a run as their quarry disappeared into the alley.

Sensible people would walk away.

With a sigh, Hawke went after them.

It wasn’t much of a fight, all told. Yes, there were two templars, but they didn’t expect someone to come along and clout one of them over the head from behind, now did they?

Hawke had dealt with more than her share of templars in her time. She’d learned where the weak points in their armor were, and she was more willing to fight dirty. She’d also learned that there was a certain type of templar that was far more used to pushing around frightened, unarmored mages than going toe to toe with a well-armed and experienced warrior.

So she knocked one of them over the head, and while he was staggering about dazed, she clipped the other one in the side of the knee, leading to a rather undignified shriek, muffled when she then grabbed him by the ears and slammed her knee into his face. That dropped that one for the moment; his mate took a swing at her, growling. Hawke’s head snapped back as his fist connected with her face. She staggered, but he was still reeling, too, so she charged into him, knocking him back against the brick wall and jabbing the pommel of her sword into his ribs a couple of times for good measure.

She wasn’t actually of a mind to kill them if she didn’t have to, after all.

With both of the templars now slumped and groaning, Hawke took the liberty of seizing the young woman’s arm to hustle her along the alley and out the other end.

“Thank you,” the girl said, wide-eyed, and only then did Hawke notice the unnatural heat radiating from the girl’s arm where she touched her.

She let go immediately. “It’s no trouble,” she said lightly, brushing off the awkward gratitude. “Though I suppose you are a mage, aren’t you? You’d best get out of this place.”

The girl nodded, biting her lip and rubbing her hands together, hiding the glimmer of flame between her palms. Bethany had used to do the same. “I know. I will. I was only here to visit my sister, she’s having a baby. I stay out in the hills, there’s... a camp There’s a camp, out in the hills, where I... would you... like to join us?” She looked up at Hawke with a certain eagerness. “We could always use help.”

Hawke swallowed, her shoulders tightening. With that look in her eyes, the young mage seemed not so much Bethany as Anders, who’d always watched her with such... _expectation_. These days, that look made her skin crawl. “Believe me, I’d bring more trouble than help,” she said as brightly as she could. “Best we both be on our way.”

The young woman’s face fell, though she said, “So be it, then. I could... heal your wound if you like?”

“Wound?” Hawke put her hand to her face and found, sure enough, a trickle of blood from her split lip. “Oh, that. Well, if you don’t mind.”

Her hands were warm and soft and felt — sparkly — Hawke had never been able to find the right word for the peculiar tingle of torn flesh knitting back together, though she’d tried, a few nights after too much to drink. The girl gave her one last hopeful look, but Hawke resolutely went the other direction, clearing out of town before the templars she’d pummeled could rouse themselves and start looking for her.

#

Once he got started, Varric wrote the tale remarkably quickly. Even for him, and he’d always been able to turn out crisp, serviceable prose on demand.

What he was doing now might even be _inspired_ prose. He’d never had a writing experience quite like this before: no more than a handful of nights spent burning through his supply of candles and oil, putting the events of the last ten years into a shape that made sense. He started with his notes, to jog his memory about those early days nearly ten years ago. But by the end, Varric ignored the notes and wrote from sheer momentum, caught up telling the story right. Getting the people right. Hawke, brilliant and clever and caring too much, not that she’d let that show most of the time. Anders, divided and tragic, pushed to extremes. Fenris and Isabela and Merrill and Sebastian, each bringing new complications into Hawke’s life. On the page, the scattered band of comrades came to life, colorful and full-blooded, alternately bickering and working together.

But Hawke, Hawke was the star; rising and flaming and falling, drawing the rest of them after her. Hawke scrapping and delving for a fortune, to buy her family’s status back; Hawke bold and wry and dazzling, thumbing her nose at Kirkwall’s high society; Hawke standing alone against the might of the Arishok; Hawke stumbling as she tried to walk a tightrope between Chantry and mage and templar, with a light hand and a quip, and how it had all come crashing down. He wrote it all out: Hawke and Anders and Meredith and muddy, bloody Kirkwall, and the red lyrium that drove people mad.

It might be the best thing he’d ever written.

Even so, it was a knotty story. Too many plot threads. It would have been simpler to write only about that cursed lyrium, dragged out of the depths of the earth by desperate fortune-hunters. Or only about how the qunari came and left, leaving Kirkwall leaderless. Or only about the strains in the Circle that tore the whole city apart, in the end. Weaving those threads together took some work. At least he could make the case to his editor that all that stuff had to be there, because it was true; but he did his damnedest to make some sense of it, to show how and why Hawke got to be in the place she was when Meredith finally snapped. Varric pulled it off with a little writerly sleight-of-hand. He left a few things out, elaborated on other details, planted clues that Hawke had never actually seen, kept the reader guessing where disaster was going to come from.

Little details like that were flexible. What felt more important, the more he wrote, was to tell Hawke’s story: how she’d had more put upon her than any reasonable person would have put up with, and how she’d done her best to handle it all — if not with grace, then with sarcasm and humor, and a certain... fearlessness, or... a least a willingness to knock heads together, in a pinch.

Tricks of the trade and all, the book was the truest thing Varric had ever written.

On the last night, he read it all through, made a few minor corrections, and stared at the last page with burning eyes. He’d done it: made some kind of sense of what had happened to Kirkwall. He wasn’t quite sure he’d gotten it down, after all, the thing that made her _Hawke_. But he’d tried.

Pulling out a fresh page, he started a fresh letter to his publisher.

_I know you_ _’ve been hoping for a sequel to_ Hard in Hightown _. This still isn’t that. You’ve probably heard that Kirkwall’s had some misfortunes lately. So I have a different kind of story for you. A true one: how we got to where things are. Hope you can get it printed up fast. I think there’s going to be a big audience for this one._

_V. T._

His publisher wasn’t going to be happy. They liked fluff and drama, serials they could peddle over and over again.

This wasn’t a serial, but it had all the drama and tragedy anyone could ask for. It had needed to be written, and it would sell. Varric was as sure of that as he was of anything. With what had gone down in Kirkwall, people wanted to know what and why. They were already telling their own stories. Varric could tell a better one.

#

Hawke spotted the book in a medium town whose name she hadn’t paid any attention to. The place was too small to have a proper book shop, but one of the peddlers in the market had a few books for sale.

Hawke was at the next stall, buying a bag of apples for the road, when she spied a familiar name prominently displayed on the cover. She drifted over once she’d paid for her snacks. “Excuse me, but I just happened to notice... is that really the latest from Varric Tethras?”

Varric did complain about people stealing his ideas, sometimes.

The merchant, a stout middle-aged lady, beamed at her. “It is! I just got a shipment in two days ago. Do you know him?”

Hawke covered a moment of panic with raised eyebrows and a fixed smile. “Know him?”

“His work, I mean. I lost track of how many copies of _Hard in Hightown_ I sold. Such a wonderful book.”

Hawke relaxed. “Oh. No. Not personally, of course. I’m simply a fan. An avid fan.”

The woman leaned forward, bright-eyed, propping an elbow on the counter. “Really? Which is your favorite?”

“Oh, it’s so hard to choose,” Hawke said. “But this one doesn’t look like his usual, does it?”

“It’s not so different. This one’s all true.” The merchant sighed, her expression going tragic. “I’ve only just started myself, and it’s so tragic — the poor people fleeing the Blight, and all they lost, and then getting indentured to gangs for their pains.” She sniffed and dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. “Tugs right at your heartstrings.”

“I’m sure it does,” Hawke said through a smile that had grown tight. “I simply can’t wait to read it. What are you charging?”

She managed to bargain the merchant down. Which wasn’t quite fitting for a true fan, but Hawke was damned if she was going to pay a premium for reading her own life story.

He’d claimed for years that he was writing up the story of their adventures. Evidently he’d finally gone and done it.

She felt almost absurdly proud of him, as if she’d been smiling beatifically over his shoulder, cutting fresh pens for him as he wrote.

She also felt outraged, a proprietary sort of high dudgeon. She would have liked nothing better than to sweep into the Hanged Man, flinging the door open with a dramatic _bang_ , dropping the book on the table before Varric with another _bang_ , and demanding to know what he thought he was doing.

It was all Hawke could do not to crack open the cover immediately and dive into the thing, but instead she sauntered away, casually munching on an apple as if she hadn’t a care in the world. She continued away from the town’s market, passing through shabby streets. She tossed apples to a couple of scrawny-looking children while she was at it, remembering the pinch of hunger rather too well. She kept going until the scattered cottages had given way to open, rocky countryside, and as soon as she saw a tree sizable enough to provide decent shade, she plopped herself down among its broad roots and snatched the book out of her bag.

_This is the true story of the Champion of Kirkwall_ , she read and made a face as if her apple had turned sour. Especially when the book began with their flight from Lothering. Varric hadn’t even been there! Hawke read with a skeptical eye, sniffing at the overly dramatic description of darkspawn even as she tugged her cloak more securely round her shoulders against a sudden chill. The breeze had turned cold, that was all.

She put the book down for a second when Carver died, staring into the distance and blinking very carefully. Varric hadn’t been there, either, but he’d gotten much closer to the truth of things than she liked to remember. Had she told him that much about it, over the years? She didn’t think she’d mentioned it more than briefly, which suggested that Bethany had told him about it, sometime or other, though Hawke had no idea when.

Trying to shake off her bad mood, she flipped through the next pages quickly. Varric didn’t much care about that first year in Kirkwall, so it appeared; Hawke snorted when she got to Varric’s cavalier entrance on the scene, which he’d written as considerably more suave and collected than she remembered it.

She kept reading, and found herself drawn in in spite of herself as familiar names appeared in the pages. Each of her old companions got a dramatic entrance, when Hawke was fairly sure she’d simply met Isabela one night in the tavern. Even so, Varric recreated the mood and feel of Kirkwall so well she could almost smell the salt air and the less pleasant aromas wafting up from Darktown. It was absorbing, too, these adventures of the plucky, impoverished refugee scrambling all over Kirkwall doing odd jobs to earn the coin she needed. If Hawke pretended she was reading about someone other than herself, she could find herself rooting for this rash and desperate heroine.

Hawke eventually realized that the shadows had lengthened, and that she needed to hurry on her way if she had any hope of making it to an inn and a bed rather than camping by the road. Not that she couldn’t — she’d done it before — but the nights turned colder this time of year, and the thought of stretching out on the cold, lumpy ground, trying to read her book by firelight, held little appeal. Reluctantly, she slid the book into her pack and rose, stretching out the knots and kinks in her limbs. She’d dallied long enough already.

Indeed, it was both dark and raining by the time she arrived at an inn, so Hawke arrived wet, bedraggled, and in a bad temper. The innkeeper claimed to have only one room left, and the taproom was crowded enough for Hawke to believe this, so she grudgingly parted with more coin than she would have liked. The room was warm, at least, and there was stew and ale, neither of which Hawke chose to ask too many questions about. She managed to secure herself a seat near the fire with a bit of aggressive looming, and propped up her book to read while she ate.

“Tale of the Champion, eh? Any good?”

It was the fellow at the next table, a tall, lean man in well-worn leathers and a wide-brimmed hat. Hawke gave him a sidelong look as she swallowed. “If you don’t mind utter claptrap,” she said, fresh from reading about a ridiculous encounter with a rock-monster in the depths of the Deep Roads. It hadn’t happened that way, of course; the real thing had involved a good deal more near-starvation. Hawke supposed that didn’t make as exciting a story.

The man chuckled. “Don’t mind a bit of fancy to while away the time. Not your style?”

Hawke cast another wary glance toward him, abruptly regretting that she’d opened her mouth at all. Varric’s damned book had gone and made her forget that she was supposed to be minding her own affairs and not spouting off at the mouth. “Er,” she said. “It’s just not very believable, for a book that’s supposed to be a true story.”

“Can’t believe everything you read.”

“Mm.” With an effort, Hawke bit back on her thoughts. Fortunately, her neighbor wasn’t inclined to further chatter

Having been shaken out of the story, however, she found herself unable to focus on it again. The taproom was entirely too familiar — crowded, warm, full of cheerful noise, redolent with the smells of dubious stew, ale, damp wool clothing, and human bodies — but it wasn’t the Hanged Man. The air didn’t have that extra tang of salt. More importantly, Varric wasn’t presiding from his usual seat. If he had one in this place, it would be right over _there_ , close to the fire but not too close, with a view of the door. Hawke swallowed, abruptly missing everything, including Corff’s particular varieties of dubious stew and ale. She missed everyone, too, but especially Varric, planted in the tavern like any rich layabout, firelight gleaming off the gold rings in his ears and the gold stitching on his expensive coat, charming everyone around.

He’d recreated Kirkwall a little too well, and she wished he were here so hard, her throat felt thick with it.

She was becoming a maudlin drunk, Hawke decided, though an hour ago, she wouldn’t have said that the ale was terribly strong.

#

_I_ _’d heard of Hawke before I met her. Keeping an ear to the ground, I heard about talent coming up in assorted organizations, and I started hearing things about a certain Ferelden newcomer. Capable, they said. Bold, sturdy, skilled, honorable. I knew when I laid eyes on her that I’d found the business partner I wanted. That she became a true friend was simply a bonus._

_— The Tale of the Champion_

#

In the morning, Hawke went to the local office of the Merchants’ Guild and asked a clerk if there were any letters from home, a code they’d cobbled together when she was fleeing Kirkwall. The clerk, barely glancing up from her ledgers, produced a sealed paper from a drawer. Only one this time, eh. Hawke fought down a lump of disappointment. Varric doubtless had better things to do than write her letters. Such as write books about her, evidently.

_Hawke,_

_Hope this catches up with you quickly. There_ _’s been a development you should know about. You probably know already there’s been a lot of talk about what happened here, and about your part in everything. My publisher expressed an interest in hearing the real story, so I went back through the notes I’ve made over the last few years. One thing led to another and the book’s already at the printers’. I’m sorry I couldn’t talk to you about it first. I wanted to take the opportunity to get the tale out there now, before everyone’s made up their minds. Tell the truth about you._

_Rumor says the Chantry might send someone out to Kirkwall to make inquiries. I_ _’ll believe it when I see them get off their robed asses. Another rumor says the Divine’s going to appoint a new Grand Cleric. The templars don’t seem inclined to replace Meredith yet; Cullen’s still acting Knight-Commander, though he doesn’t use the title. It’s no rumor to say he’s let some of the templars go..._

Hawke’s eye skimmed over the rest of the letter, the obligatory comments about Aveline and Merrill. Hardly anything about Varric himself. She read the first part of the letter again, frowning at the familiar neat script. The _real story_ , was it? Real enough, she supposed, and yet she could feel Varric’s hand shaping the narrative.

Grudgingly, she admitted that she could understand the motive. The publisher got a book on a hot topic, which would sell like mad. Varric got to tell the story he’d been itching to tell for years. And he got to tell his own version out before anyone else could dare to tell the story. With all he’d done for her, she supposed he had a right. He’d had up-close seats to the whole spectacle.

She sighed and tucked the letter in her pack along with the rest of them. This one was nearly three weeks old. Quick moving, indeed; the publisher must have been wild to get the thing out.

“Reply?” the clerk asked.

Hawke hesitated for a moment. She didn’t have a letter ready, but she could dash off a few lines... perhaps not now, while she was still sorting out what she thought about the whole thing.

“Not just now,” she said. The clerk nodded and returned to her work.

The book in Hawke’s pack felt heavy as she hitched it into place on her shoulders. Part of her wanted to settle down for the day and see what else Varric had to say. The rest of her knew it was best to keep moving while the day was fresh and she had plenty of energy. No good standing around the guild offices waiting to be noticed.

Deep down, a sad, sore part of her wanted to turn her feet back toward Kirkwall. That made no sense at all. Too many templars (and probably some others) had it in for her there. Besides, going back to Kirkwall wouldn’t be the same. Her friends were scattered, some of them gone, and the city was a whole new kind of mess. There wouldn’t be any sitting around with ale and a hand of cards, or trawling the docks for thugs. She couldn’t expect to go back and have things be the same, just as she couldn’t go back to Lothering. Her life had had too many breaches in it, ruptures between what had been and what was now, where you simply couldn’t cross back any more.

There would still be Varric, of course, and Aveline. And though Aveline was a rock-steady friend and Hawke had known her longer, it was Varric she found herself missing most. Reading the book made her think of him especially, she supposed. Now that she wasn’t drunk, shes could list off things she missed: trading jokes, teasing him while he tried to tell a story, watching him keenly while he shuffled and cut the cards, counting hits in their too-frequent skirmishes. They’d become fast friends so easily, though most wouldn’t have said they were much alike, she supposed. The short blond dwarf in his fancy coat, with his tricked-out crossbow, and the tall dark human in homespun and leather. But they worked well together when it counted, whether that was on a battlefield or round the card table.

She wished he could have come with her, though she couldn’t imagine prying him out of Kirkwall. He was too much a part of the city, at home in every quarter, even if he complained endlessly any time he was made to go out of doors for an hour. But if only she could have, this whole journey would be a great deal more fun, dwarven complaining and all.

#

_Even before she was Champion, you noticed Hawke as soon as she came into a room. Tall, rugged, she moved with a bit of a swagger even when she had nothing but her sword and the clothes on her back — mismatched and much-mended, into the bargain. She stood out from sheer presence, and then you_ _’d see her eyes. Brilliant and piercing, aquamarine one moment and tourmaline green the next. Once you got a good look at Hawke’s eyes, you’d never forget her._

_— The Tale of the Champion_

#

“Well, I don’t care for it. Where’s the new chapter of _Swords and Shields_? That’s what I want to read.”

Another town, another tavern, and wherever Hawke went, she found people talking about _The Tale of the Champion_. Trying to look nonchalant, she eavesdropped on the conversation at the next table.

“Romance is all right, but you should look around and read something real one of these days,” said a plump dwarf with curly brown hair.

“Besides, it’s just as good as everything else he’s written,” chimed in the third woman at the table. “This one’s got adventure and feeling, too. The whole part with her mother! I cried.”

Hawke had skipped over the part where her mother died. She’d started flicking through pages as soon as she realized what was coming.

The first speaker shuddered, drawing her shawl more tightly around her shoulders. “That poor woman. All those poor women. What that mage did to them... That’s why people like that need to be locked up, so they don’t hurt the rest of us.”

“What about that other mage, taking care of all the poor sick people?” asked the third. “He helped a lot of people when nobody else would.”

Hawke sighed. That woman evidently hadn’t finished the book yet.

“You two have argued about mages five times already this week,” said the dwarf woman. “We’re meant to be talking about the book.”

“Well, there are mages in it,” the first started, stubbornly, and then wilted under the dwarf’s scathing look. “Sorry, Marta.”

Hawke decided she liked Marta.

Marta said, “Speaking of adventure, the fight against the qunari was good.”

“I can’t believe anyone could stand against some beast of an oxman!”

“A skilled enough warrior, though—”

Hawke could hardly believe it herself, and she’d been the one to do it. Surreptitiously, she rubbed at one of the scars along her ribs where the Arishok had spitted her like a prize pig. She _had_ read that section of the _Tale_ , out of a morbid curiosity to see what Varric had to say about it. Her own memories of the event were rather blurred. 

In Varric’s telling, the fight was brutal and visceral, but there was a kind of noble purpose to it: one brave (or terminally stupid) human standing for her city against the iron-gray monster who would conquer it. Hawke hadn’t been thinking that way at the time. She’d hardly been thinking at all; the whole night had been one thing after another, as the lot of them scrambled to deal with the mess before the qunari did it for them.

She’d never meant to be Champion. She’d never even claimed to stand for the whole city. She’d only gone to treat with the Arishok because she thought he might have a little respect for her, and somehow she’d found herself agreeing to a duel before she’d had a chance to think.

Possibly a good thing in the long run, as if she’d _had_ that chance to think, she might have run as far and fast as her feet could carry her.

The three women had fallen into an amiable squabble over Hawke’s chances against the Arishok. Hawke chose not to enlighten them as to the reality of the situation, though she suspected there was a good chance she could get them to buy her a few drinks before anyone took it into their heads to summon the templars or the city guard. Probably.

Seemed irresponsible to test that notion, though.

“There’s not enough romance, though,” the first woman said once their argument settled down. “The fighting and adventure’s all well and good, but I miss when his books used to have, you know... love. Real feeling.”

Marta chuckled, lighting her pipe.

“Oh, there’s plenty of feeling!” said the third woman.

“Nonsense, this Hawke woman isn’t getting involved with anyone! I had hopes for her and that nice Chantry brother, but —”

“Prince Sebastian? Oh, Flory, I just don’t see it —”

At the next table, Hawke’s head sank further into her propped-up fist as the two women mercilessly dissected her romantic prospects, or lack thereof. Maker. And all right, it wasn’t as if Hawke hadn’t looked — she’d run around with a lot of quite attractive people, all said and done — but they were friends, nothing more than that, and most of her friends had enough troubles of their own to deal with without complicating their lives any further. Besides, no matter how ardently they’d read the book, none of these good souls had actually met the people involved. Varric brought them to life in his pages, all right, but he smoothed them out a little, all the same. Merrill was a good deal harder-headed than she seemed on the page, for one (Varric always had had the softest spot for her), and Isabela sometimes wore enough perfume to make Hawke’s nose itch (besides which, Bela snored, this was a fact, no matter how much she denied it), Sebastian had a habit of quoting the Chant at the least opportune moments, Fenris was Hawke’s dear friend but also an absolutely horrendous housekeeper. All of them had little things that Hawke could cope with in a friend and comrade-in-arms, but that would drive her to distraction in someone she lived with. Not that Hawke was a great treat to live with, herself. For one thing, she was more of a morning person than any of them.

“— but no, really, if she belongs with anyone it’s with Varric himself.”

Hawke’s eyes, drooping closed from a mixture of boredom and embarrassment, shot wide open.

Flory scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’m not!”

“They never _do_ anything!”

Quite right. Hawke scrambled through what she remembered of her life and the book, trying to think what could lead the wide-eyed reader to think such a thing.

“But look at how he talks about her! You can tell he fair worships the woman, the way he writes about her.”

You could?

Surreptitiously, Hawke reached into her pack and fished for the damned book.

“He’s always on about her eyes and how tall and splendid she is and all that sort of thing. I know I haven’t finished yet, but... come now, surely they must have been an item?”

“Not that I ever heard,” Flory said, dubiously.

“As if we’d have heard any such gossip all the way out here.”

“Tethras is a dwarf, though,” Flory said. “No offense, Marta, but you folk mostly stick to your own, so far as I’ve seen.”

Marta said, “True enough, many of us do. And many of us just don’t think you lot are so handsome, with your silly gangly legs and all.” All three of them laughed at what sounded like a familiar joke. “But mark my words,” Marta went on, removing the pipe from her mouth and pointing with it for emphasis, “no one writes a whole book defending a lady’s honor if he doesn’t have some kind of strong feeling about the lady.”

“There, you see?” The third woman flung out her hands emphatically. “Marta agrees with me!” As if that settled everything.

“Hm,” Flory said grudgingly. “I’ll have to have another look.”

#

_Hawke was formally proclaimed Champion in a ceremony on the steps of the Viscount_ _’s palace, where she’d won her victory over the Arishok. The ceremony had to wait until she’d recovered, of course. People wanted to see their Champion hale and hearty. Besides, that allowed time for the Champion’s armor to be commissioned: a special set, made by the city’s finest armorers. Each plate perfectly articulated, molded into heavy, spiked edges, polished until they shone in the sun. With her height and coloring, Hawke cut an impressive figure, even though the Knight-Commander stood on the step above her, resplendent in her own templar armor, and named Hawke Champion in a loud voice._

_All eyes were on Hawke, though. Everyone knew the Viscount_ _’s throne still lay empty._

_— The Tale of the Champion_

_#_

Varric did not either talk about her eyes that much.

Hawke had looked, paging feverishly back through the book, trying to find every scrap of description.

All right, he certainly described her eyes more than once, but it wasn’t... it wasn’t...

Varric was her friend. Her closest friend, yes. The one who never seemed irritated even by Hawke’s worst jokes; who always joined in, Bianca in hand, no matter how much he complained about being outdoors or cleaning spider guts off his coat. He loaned her money from time to time and bought her drinks, but Varric looked after all his friends. He made sure Merrill never got too lost, and he paid numerous people off to look the other way when it came to Anders and Merrill both, plus Fenris, squatting in that decrepit old mansion for years, and he threw work Fenris’ way, and he paid Isabela’s tab more than half the time. Even Aveline owed Varric a favor or two, for tipping her off about some truly unpleasant individuals operating in Kirkwall’s underworld. Certainly, he’d come to a few formal affairs as Hawke’s escort, one of her few friends who was vaguely socially appropriate to do so, and he always had an ear for her, and dear Maker, he’d written three hundred pages explaining to the whole world how the Chantry blowing up hadn’t been her fault after all, and he did mention her eyes a _few_ times during those three hundred pages.

Damn it all, anyway.

He’d never made a move, never breathed a hint of anything. He always said he was saving himself for Bianca, or he wasn’t into humans, or his heart belonged to another, or some other damned thing. Hawke had nursed a little crush, back when she’d first met him. Why shouldn’t she? Varric was smooth and clever and silver-tongued and seemed to like her, and it turned her head a little, when she was a mercenary-refugee used to people resenting her.  She’d appreciated being treated as an equal, especially given how poor she and her family actually were. She’d thought... maybe, sometime, once they’d made their fortunes. She’d even tried to flirt, once things had settled down a little, but she’d been dreadful at it. Too broad, her overtures too easily written off as jokes. Varric had smiled and laughed but ignored her attempts, and she’d given up, assuming he was genuinely not interested. She’d put it out of her mind, and it hadn’t even bothered her in the years since. Not much, at any rate.

But now there was the book. All three hundred pages of it. The book couldn’t be put aside, and now that she’d looked through it again, the weight of those three hundred pages sat uncomfortably, along with Marta’s words.

She was putting a lot of weight in the judgment of a complete stranger, at that, which was more than a little nonsensical of her.

_Varric,_

_You know, someone said the funniest thing about me and you_

_Varric,_

_As it happens, I saw the book myself, and_

_Varric,_

_I don_ _’t know why you felt the need to write this thing, but_

_Varric,_

_You_ _’ll never believe what I heard people saying_

_Varric,_

Scrunched up in a rented room under the eaves, Hawke scowled at her much-crossed-out letter. At this rate, she was going to run out of paper before she managed to say anything. Words were Varric’s thing, not Hawke’s. She was all right with a quip (though Varric had put a lot of clever things in her mouth that she didn’t remember saying), but with a blank page in front of her, all the good ideas leeched right out of her head.

Really, it was no good at all, trying to write out the thing she most wanted to ask, the absurd speculation of some romantic strangers talking in a tavern. It was nonsense. Ridiculous. She felt foolish just sitting there with the ink drying on her pen. _Hey Varric, some women in a tavern said you were in love with me, isn_ _’t that silly?_

She could just imagine him receiving a letter like that. Maybe he’d have a good laugh over it, knock back a few drinks, tell Aveline — all right, no, Varric wouldn’t do that last. The first two, certainly.

Hawke frowned to herself, picturing him chuckling over the letter, shaking his head, reaching for his mug. She could almost smell the ale and whiskey, hear the low crackle of the fireplace in his room, and her desire to be there swelled up in her throat, nearly choking her.

She could go back.

Instead of sending her poor, scribbled-over letter, she could go and talk to him herself. She could talk far more easily than she could write. She could go, and at least see his face, and maybe she’d ask him about it and maybe she wouldn’t, but...

It was a wildly foolish idea, for all the same reasons it had been a bad idea the day before. She was daft to even think it.

_Templars_ , she reminded herself. Templars in _Kirkwall_ , where everybody knew her. There were good reasons she left, and good reasons she was staying away. It was ridiculous to consider a risk like going back just because of some overheard strangers’ chatter. Those people didn’t even _know_ Varric.

But now that the idea was lodged in her head, it wouldn’t go away.

She’d sleep on it, she decided, folding up her battered letter and tucking it between pages of the book before she turned out the light.

#

_It could take a while for Hawke to make up her mind. Especially in a complicated situation, she_ _’d try to wait and hear everyone out. Make a joke, hoping that people would see reason._

_Maybe that was her downfall._

_But once she had made up her mind, she_ _’d stick to whatever she decided, even if it seemed foolhardy to anyone else. Once she’d settled on a course, she could be the stubbornest person I knew._

_— The Tale of the Champion_

#

Outside, a crack of lightning split Kirkwall’s skies. Moments later, thunder rumbled like a wave on the shore. Storms blew in from the sea this time of year; the rain was already here, scouring dirt from the streets and alleys, clattering on the tile roofs.

Varric set the page he was writing aside to blot the ink, and started toward his open window to close the shutters. Halfway there, he realized what he was hearing wasn’t just rain pattering against the sill, but the scraping of someone climbing up the side of the building.

A pair of hands grasped the sill.

He backpedaled, reaching for Bianca, who sat demurely by the fire, and then froze as a familiar face rose above the hands.

“Good evening,” said Hawke.

Varric let go of Bianca and sat, rather abruptly, in the nearest chair. For once he was at a loss for words.

“Fancy meeting you here,” Hawke continued. She pulled herself up to the window and crawled in, slinging first one long leg over the sill and then the other.

“Hawke,” Varric said, finding his voice. “What are you _doing_ here?” Not that he wasn’t glad to see her, but she wasn’t supposed to _be_ here. The fact that she was gave him a slow sick feeling of dread along with the relief.

Hawke lifted her chin and wiped wet hair out of her face. She’d let it grow longer, he noted absently. “Well, you know,” she said, airily and vaguely.

“No, I don’t,” he snapped, suddenly thoroughly irritated. “The templars are still after you, half the people in the city blame you for what Anders did, and rumor says the Chantry’s sending agents to question everyone involved. Did anyone see you on your way? Get in here and shut the window.”

Hawke raised her eyebrows. “What a flattering invitation,” she said, but she complied, sliding all the way in and latching the shutters behind her. Standing, she nearly bumped her head on the ceiling where the roof slanted down toward the window. Her gear creaked as she moved, with the particular squeak of wet leather, and water dripped on the floor where she stood.

Varric sighed. “Get over here by the fire. You’ve got to be soaked.”

“Just a little downpour. Nothing to be concerned about,” Hawke said. Outside, thunder boomed. Varric rolled his eyes.

She avoided dripping on the books and furnishings as she went, which Varric appreciated. He got up, found a stack of fluffy Antivan cotton towels in a storage chest, and tossed one at her as she took a seat. “Here.”

“How kind of you,” Hawke said, perching on a stool and wiping her face with the towel. She did it carefully, fastidiously moving from her face to her hair, shrugging off her wet cloak and laying it aside to dry.

Varric watched her fuss at her hands and clothing and concluded that she was not about to explain what brought her here without prompting.

“Hawke. Why are you here?” 

“Can’t a person visit her oldest friend?” she said without looking up.

“Aveline’s your oldest friend,” he said. “And sure, a person can, if they want to end up arrested by templars.”

“Closest friend, then,” she said, shooting him a quick, oddly intent glance.

Varric suppressed a sigh. “Hawke.”

She hesitated and then returned to rubbing vigorously at her hair. “Well, you went and wrote this book about me.” Her voice came out muffled beneath the towel.

“Shit,” Varric said, his heart sinking. “I tried to warn you about that, but the printing moved fast. Did you...”

“I got your letter,” she said. “But I read the book first.” When she left off drying her hair, half of it stuck out, damp and spiky.

“Oh.” Why, in that fever to write, had he not thought more about what Hawke might think, when she read it? The prospect of her reading it had seemed far-off and unreal then, even when he wrote that letter. Now, with Hawke planted in his rooms, his stomach churned like a kid showing off his first manuscript. It took him a moment to say, “What did you think?”

She hesitated for a second, her eyes darting about, and then said, “Well, I have one complaint. The Bone Pit’s not so bad as all that.”

“The Bone Pit is an everlasting disaster and a sinkhole for coin, and you know it.”

“That’s true,” she said, bending over and fumbling with her boots, “but I’ll never sell it now you’ve told everyone, will I?” The first boot came off with a pop. “Ah, that’s better.”

“That’s it?” Varric said, watching her get the other boot off and wriggle her toes in their wet grey socks. “You came all the way back to Kirkwall to tell me that?” That couldn’t be all of it, but he felt peculiarly nettled, irritation that she’d taken the risk and something like disappointment mixing.

“Mostly to see your face,” Hawke said with a quick glance at him before her eyes drifted to the side. She wrapped her arms around herself. “I’m curious why you wrote it, you know.”

Was _that_ all? Hadn’t he said, in the letter? “To set the story straight,” he said. “You wouldn’t believe what people have been saying —” He stopped himself, pushing back the memory of an ugly argument he’d seen in Lowtown just yesterday.

“Oh, I probably would,” Hawke said softly. “If people want to blame me, it’s not as if they’re wrong.”

They were, though. “It’s more complicated than that,” Varric said instead. “I thought people deserved to have the full story before passing judgment.” He’d thought she deserved better judgment, and the sight of her here, perched on a stool in wet socks and clothes, didn’t do anything to change his mind. She looked smaller, slumped and vulnerable.

“Mm,” Hawke said. She shivered, picking at a loose thread on her sleeve. “I suppose that explains all the personal parts.”

Shit. Varric’s heart went on a little sprint. “Yeah, I... thought it filled in things people ought to know. Gave a sense of the whole person.” He swallowed. “Sorry if I overstepped. You’re not mad about that, are you?” He would have expected her to tear in here more loudly, if she were angry, but maybe that explained her caginess.

“Mad?” Hawke said. “I wouldn’t say that, no.” Her arms tightened around herself, in spite of the lingering heat from the dying fire in the hearth. Her eyes cut toward him and then drifted toward the door. “It was... peculiar, though. To see oneself talked about. There were things I’d forgotten about, or maybe you made them up.”

Varric winced. “Yeah, I... massaged the details a little, here and there. A little dramatic license.”

“It was all quite... moving, though,” Hawke continued, as if she hadn’t heard him. “I suppose most people don’t get to see themselves as someone else does, so clearly.”

Varric shifted in place, uncomfortable with where this was going. He’d put Hawke down on the page the way he remembered her, the way he wanted her remembered. The Hawke in front of him felt both smaller and larger than the one he’d written. Softer, with blurrier edges, but the sound of her breathing louder than he remembered.

She was still shivering, he realized belatedly. “You’ve got to be freezing in those wet clothes. Let me find you something.” He turned to rummage through the storage chests.

Hawke laughed. “I doubt anything of yours is going to fit me.”

A brief image of her in one of his shirts, too short wide enough to fall off her shoulders, flashed through his mind. “Obviously,” he said, digging into the bottom of the chest, where he’d stashed certain items, “but I have some stuff of yours. Ha!” He found the item he was looking for, and hauled it out with a flourish. “See, here you go.”

It was one of the coats she’d liked to wear at home. This one had been a gift from Isabela, he thought: rich red cloth, embroidered in ochre and sienna threads, soft and warm.

Hawke blinked as she recognized it. “Oh, Maker, I’d wondered where that was. Where did you get it?”

“Bodahn found it when we were cleaning up your house, after you’d gone. Orana’d taken it for mending it, so it wasn’t in your room.” It was a familiar garment, one Varric had seen Hawke wear scores of times. Probably hundreds. He’d kept it more out of sentimentality than any real thought he’d be able to return it. “It’s mended now, and clean and dry.” He held out the coat, but Hawke made no move to take it. Hunched in on herself, with her hair in disarray, she looked a bit like a wet and ruffled crow. “Come on,” Varric said, with a touch of exasperation. Her mood made no sense at all.

Hawke jumped when he tried to press the coat into her hands, flinching as if his touch shocked her, though she pulled the coat into her lap defensively. “I heard the funniest thing, did you know,” she said in a bright, determined voice. Varric’s instincts as a liar immediately pegged it as false.

“What was that?” he asked, deciding to draw her out.

“I overheard some ladies reading the book and speculating about it. They were quite fans of yours, by the way, they’d read all your stuff, and I think a good deal more romance besides, and they thought — oh, why am I even, it doesn’t matter what they thought.”

She tensed, gathering herself as if she was about to stand. Half out of curiosity, half hoping to forestall whatever she was planning, Varric said, “Was that the funny thing? What did they think?”

Hawke shrugged, evading his gaze. “They thought you must have written the book because you love me.”

Varric stopped breathing. Everything seemed to stop, except for the low crackle of the fire and the rattle of rain outside. The first thought that flickered through his mind was: _Smart readers_. And then _Oh, hell_. He hadn’t even registered it himself. Too caught up in telling the story to notice how much he’d kept buried was leaking through.

Hawke darted a look at him, her eyes brilliant, and just as quickly looked away. “Isn’t that silly?” she said in that same too-loud, brittle way. “I just had to tell you, but now I did, I’ll be on my way.” She started to rise, her coat still gathered in her arms.

Something told Varric she’d step out that window, even without her cloak or boots.

Something told him if she did, he wouldn’t see her again any time soon. Or ever.

Quick enough to pick a pocket, he grabbed her sleeve. “Hawke.”

She stopped and met his eyes, searching his face for something.

Varric, for once, found himself struggling for the right thing to say. “It’s not so silly,” he said at last.

Hawke’s eyebrows rose. “You never said anything.”

“Yeah, well.” He tugged on her sleeve and she dropped, slowly, back onto her stool. He took a shot in the dark. “Neither did you.”

“No,” Hawke breathed. If she’d barely been able to look at him before, now it seemed like she couldn’t look away. “Well, I... flirted, a few times, years ago, but...”

“Mm.” He could hardly remember it. He’d probably taken it as harmless joking around, nothing serious. “Long time ago. Things have been weird.”

“They always are,” she said. “So... what do we do now?”

Varric shrugged, in spite of his quickening heartbeat. “Seems like this is the part of the book where you kiss the girl, or guy.”

Hawke, ever impulsive, moved first.

Convenient, Varric thought, that sitting put her at a better height.

Her lips were cool and tasted like rain; she kissed like she did everything, messily and forcefully. But as the kiss went on, it melted into something softer, warmer, smoother, something that fit better. Hawke blinked when she drew back, and smiled for the first time, fine lines crinkling around her eyes and mouth. She relaxed, balancing on her seat with more grace, looser than she’d been since she entered the room. “And what’s next, Serah Author?”

This close, he could feel the dampness rising from her clothing. In the quiet, with the fire low and rain pouring outside, everything about this felt like the logical end of the road they’d been walking for years. Varric took a breath, and suggested, “You still need to get out of those wet clothes.”

She raised her eyebrows again, the corner of her mouth quirking up. “Why, Varric, are you trying to seduce me?”

“Do I have to try?”

She was already reaching for the laces on her shirt. “No. Not at all.”

It was important, after all, to help her dry off. And warm up. Didn’t want her catching her death of cold, after all.

And by far the best place to do all of that was in the bed, where their difference in height hardly mattered at all, and there were plenty of ways to keep each other warm.

Afterward, warm and lazy and tangled in the bedding, Varric idly drew a line over the curve of her hip, watching the way shadows fell over the hills and valleys of her body, and said, “You shouldn’t stay.”

“Oh, I know.” Hawke stretched, lazily. He watched her skin shift over solid muscle and bone, rippled by scars. “There are reward placards for me all over the Marches, and Kirkwall is the one place I can’t hide.”

“Right,” Varric said, disappointed and relieved all at once. At least she was prepared to be sensible.

“I was thinking of getting out of the Marches entirely, actually. Back to Ferelden, perhaps. Or go find Bethany. The Wardens might put me up for a little while, at least.”

“Could be,” Varric agreed. The Wardens tended to be a law unto themselves.

“I’d ask you to come with me,” Hawke said, watching his face with eyes half-closed, “but I think I already know the answer.”

“I... shouldn’t,” Varric said slowly. He was too much of a known quantity himself: too conspicuous, too connected to Kirkwall. And besides, Kirkwall was a mess right now. The city needed him.

Hawke nodded. “You realize if people can’t find me, they’ll likely find you.”

“Yeah, I know.” He’d reached that conclusion a long time ago.

Hawke’s mouth tightened into a frown. She ran a hand down his arm. “Be careful.”

“Always,” he said. At least half a lie, but Hawke didn’t call him on it.

“So this is it,” she murmured, and sighed. “Do you realize we could have been doing this for _years_? We’re ridiculous.”

Varric wasn’t minded to dwell on lost opportunities right now. “We’ve got the rest of the night, at least.”

Her eyebrows twitched. “I thought I wouldn’t leave until dark.”

“The rest of the night, and all of tomorrow,” Varric amended.

Hawke laughed and rolled over. “Then let’s make the most of it.”

FIN


End file.
